


Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of Your Fist

by orphan_account



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: //whispers//kya cries over girls, Drinking to Cope, F/F, First Time, Smoking, gal pal helps gal pal get over her gal pal crush getting a new best friend, i guess?, im honestly so proud of myself, referenced sex doesnt count, this has like zero plot whatsoever, um hella tw, wo W YALL I WROTE KYALIN WITH 100 PERCENT ZERO SMUT, younger kyalin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2015-08-23
Packaged: 2018-04-16 18:48:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4636245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For when she answers the door and you have to explain, six-pack dangling from your hand, how you finally found a phone to call back that cute girl you hooked up with two years ago and she had to hang up because her husband's child needed her and everything hurts and you need somewhere to cry since the money you would have used for a hotel was spent on the six-pack and cigarettes and you're beyond your years of crying in parks.</p><p>And then she tells you to stop rambling. And half of that is hers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of Your Fist

**Author's Note:**

> dedicated to myself of last week in which i listened to nothing all day but ramshackle glory's "your heart is a muscle the size of your fist" on replay from when i went to school to when i went to sleep at night and i didnt have the slightest idea why and i still dont  
> i kind of just wanted to write younger kyalin little fetus babies and i guess i was still blasting it like it was the part of some satanic ritual chant and couldnt help myself slipping it in
> 
> take from this what you will i had like no method with the construction of this im basically that one kid who puts together a house of cards with tape

I don't remember what happened after that, lots of crying, collecting beer cans and tissues on her nightstand as I promulgate to the ceiling how unjust the spirits are to my pathetic soul and what is my _heart_. I may not have finished that sentence the way I intended to but she doesn't seem to care, doesn't even seem to be listening, eyes closed, one finger tapping in no particular rhythm on the side of a can. Doesn't even matter to me, because the spirits will hear me, and if they don't, her ceiling is an exceptionally polite one.

"Your heart's a muscle."

She's just laying there, opens her eyes and raises a clenched hand like a trophy, not seeming to be talking to me but not to anyone else.

"It's this big. Size of your fuckin' fist."

"The useless shit you learned in school--" I begin when she lets it fall to the side, landing over my chest, knuckles pressing into my shirt where my own heart throbs tiredly.

"It's fuckin' strong."

She bites her bottom lip and I let my head drop to the side and watch the white marks from her teeth fade as she shrugs and looks up to stare me dead in the eye.

"You just spend so much of your life using it on people and I think all of this pain probably means it's getting stronger. Pain is weakness leaving the body."

 

"That's the realest shit you've said in your entire life." And it's probably true, but I don't think she hears me, breaking out in full on hysterical drunken laughter and rolling away from me with her hands raised over her face before she can hold on for a response. Apparently this is contagious too, or I've drank too much, because I find myself laughing with her over something I can't even explain, watching her as she stops shaking and lifts her head. She flips over, face pressing into her snow white pillowcase and lifts herself up one elbow, staring back from disheveled, uncut curls and smiles.

"I like you."

My eyebrows raise, lifting my forgotten cigarette back up to my mouth and speak around it while trying so pathetically to ignore her accidentally being hot.

"Bullshit."

She gives me the...the _look_ , that you use on criminals in interrogation and when someone has told you how to life your life without being asked and I crush my cigarette out in the ashtray to turn back to her jokingly but completely sincere maybe underneath.

"No one likes me."

"I like you. And I probably love you too, I just don't particularly enjoy thinking about it."

Her eyes are my downfall, always have been, ten...twelve girls I've pulled under my wing and never for the kind of feeling that I get when her eyes go so soft and warm when she's drunk. Never like that, never that uncalled for urge to never take my eyes off of her long enough to blink when she's with me.

So it is in very reluctant but decisive action that I lift a hand to cover my eyes, sighing long and deep.

"You don't _love me_ Lin, I swear to fuck."

"And what if I did?" She snaps back immediately, a glaring sign she's sobering up and it would be best for me to back off now to avoid an inevitable broken nose from continuing.

 

If I get another broken nose today, it will be well worth it.

"Then I'd tell you to stop. That you've known me long enough to know I'm not worth chasing after."

She shakes her head.

"Worth isn't it, I think it's more of a matter of how fast you start running away. Like you're afraid of your own oversized heart."

I don't run. And I've heard it before, how I run away from life, from my problems--that I'm an adult and should just settle down and face reality, but I don't run.

"Stop running." snaps me out of it, and her hand on my shoulder tightening with a silent kind of plea.

" _Please_ stop running."

I'm not even sure if it's her words or the way her tongue runs over her bottom lip after they come out but I find myself suddenly--

 

Unsure.

 

And for the first time since I left the city I actually wonder what things would be like if I stayed.

And I try, try so hard in twenty seconds to remind myself why I left and tell myself how stupid I'm acting, that there's no way I could ever stay here but I realize and stop immediately in my tracks.

Cause I don't want to leave.

 

I don't know where or how long but there is no doubt in my mind, very suddenly, that this is _exactly what I want to do_.

Of course it's for her. Even though the first time I left _she_ never once crossed my mind. Not once. And she shouldn't this time either, but she does and I almost feel like I shouldn't have expected anything less of myself.

But what am I supposed to do?

Cause when I do give in, shake off her hand and flip over to kiss her harder than she's honestly probably ever been kissed, do I expect myself to just leave? Just then, after she pulls me back and my hands seem to magnetize against her, am I meant to pull away and go? When is it, when is that moment I leave her again? Five minutes later, stopping her hands from tugging my shirt over my head because I told myself I couldn't get attached?

Amid all my indecision, of course, we still end up unceremoniously ripping our clothes off between kisses that still taste like alcohol and probably smoke and my teasing laughter because she's never kissed a girl much less tried to fuck one. She tells me there was once a time I didn't even know girls could have sex and I tell her I was born with the skill.

Do I leave?

I couldn't ever.

I know all too well what kind of person I am, and it's not the kind to force myself into something I don't want to do.

 

Of course we're a big fucking mess trying to keep ourselves under control, probably because we've known each other too long and end up with inside jokes and looks only we really understand. And I'm only too familiar with her attempt to pretend she knows what she's doing. She doesn't have a clue. But I know, _one of us_ knows how long they've wanted to do this--I'll admit it, how many times I've gotten off on the idea alone--and I know exactly how to move down, exactly how to keep my eyes on her as hers are a little more focused on my hands and where they go.

Pride is derived from the knowledge that I completely understand her, the years I've spent understanding her, one of the hardest-shelled people it seems you'll ever meet and near impossible to ever truly grasp the mind of. My brother couldn't do it. No one it seems has, and I take it as one of my greatest accomplishments to have her in my hands like water whenever I make an effort to. As much as I wish there was nothing harbored for me under that. It's hard to--to help yourself like this.

 

And I take it as a sign that I don't remember anything after that when the sun comes up.

 

 

I didn't say goodbye to anyone when I left.

No one really expected me to either. Just about everyone knew my plan, though I never directly spoke of it, I was on a short fuse and that was as well known as _"Lin's sister robs banks"_ \--even though that came much later. All I remember is waking up to the same ceiling for the millionth time in my life and being done. Finally tugging my small backpack out from under my bed and walking straight off the island into the ocean and not looking back until I hit land again. There wasn't anyone I cared about enough to say goodbye to anyways, while much more interesting souls only waited on the other side. And all I wanted was to go there.

 

Painkillers are easy to find, moving soundlessly through her apartment in an effortless attempt to not wake her up, which I don't. No point in even trying really, a rock if I ever slept next to one, but I determined it all really lay in the principle of the thing.

It's her desk that I find myself drawn to, and I fall down into the swivel chair in no real rush, spinning around a few times lazily before scanning the mess of letters and...cop stuff I guess...whatever Her Majesty the Chief of Police does collect on her desk.

Reaching out with no real intention, I take a crumpled piece of what looks to be notebook paper shoved to the back corner in my fingertips and smooth it out against the surface of her desk. Filled with stupid pen doodles and the kind of idiocy you might find on a teenager's lecture notes, my eyes fall down to a margin sketch, sharply lined like she was planning on ripping through the sheet, of a profile face. Nothing professional, really no more than a basic outline anyone with knowledge of facial anatomy could do, but still recognizable. Too recognizable, and I don't even hesitate in sliding open the top drawer, putting no mind to the glaring fact that she probably wouldn't like that, only to find more. Cute, vaguely realistic pen sketches of girls with long, messy hair and dangerous smiles colored in with horizontal strokes and some scribbled out so ferociously the ball of her pen textures the other side of the page.

Her "Your heart is a muscle" speech my ass, if this is what she's been doing all this time.

 

I scan her desktop for a pen, snatching one up and flattening one of these pages on the smooth wood and scrawl in all capitals over the length of the page exactly the words I'm expected to, and leave it there, under her bottle of painkillers. I don't take anything, not even a backwards glance, shoving my pack into my pocket and leave and I don't come back.

**Author's Note:**

> honestly i think i was literally too lazy to take my ipod off of replay


End file.
